Ha, and here I was thinking that the best way to protect your children online was having an honest and open relationship and giving them decent social/online education: What a fool I am.
(88NoSoup4U88 this ain't aimmed at you. It's aimed at the generic you that would rush out and buy this product.)
The best way to protect your kids without you having to do it is... not to have any. If you can't accept that, you need to be sterilized because there is no other solution to parenting than doing it yourself or with your family (S.O. or parents, which means your S.O.'s parents.) If you don't parent or don't want to parent, then you should quickly and quietly remove yourself from the gene pool. Trust me; we are genetically programed to reproduce enough humans will breed even if you don't. Using something like this, would just allow you to shift the blame when your lack of parenting messes up and the AI doesn't do what you expect or want and allows your child to learn or absorb content that you wouldn't like.
I could see an ipod sized device with several TB recording damn near your whole life I could see doing that for your kids - after all, when you're old and cranky, you will want to get back at them somehow for putting you in that dingy nursing home. But what do you have against your future generations? Why do you hate them so much? Of course, this is slashdot, so it's an entirely theoretical discussion, but still....
Are you implying that I hate future generations because I can envision a device that could potentially record an entire human life span of audio/video/GPS/web content/entertainment data? I'll admit that I couldn't careless about "reviewing" the bulk of my life. Heck, I slept through 5-8 hours daily talk about how you could compress that down! Of course, it could be a boon to doctors/scientists studying sleep disorders and building better beds and pillows to have the sleep data of millions. I won't even go into detail how such a device could be used to record the entire familial sexual history back several generations and as people mature. Heck, "child" porn laws would have to be thrown out the window if any most "kids" record their "entire" sexual history from pre18 until old age. I'm not ready for that. The future is too scary for me. I'm only comfortable of seeing attractive strangers in their early 20s have sex. I don't think that I could handle a future where I could have access to my parents, my grand parent's, and my great grand parent's "entire" sexual history with ommentary and highlights. Sorry, you were right. I do hate the future generations.
Let your kids get a few colds, they'll be fine. And yes, maybe you'll catch a cold or the flu from someone coming through your building. You'll be fine too. I could not take a shower for a week, come down with a cold, cough all over my hands, shake your hand and give you a hug. Trust me, it won't kill you.
Genetically we are the same and my system and my kid's sytem could handle it fine. Do I want you or your kind anywhere near my family if I can help it? Not on your life. I hate smokers and those that emit oders as forcefully invading my personal air space. Those that smoke, emit oders including perfume, from too much drink body from lack of regular bathing/showering, and those that knowingly purposely spread disease should all have the same social stigma as worse than sex offenders that aim for little kids. I don't mind you doing your thing, but you better not let my senses be aware that you and your friends are doing your thing and that includes smell. The human nose is the most underused air sampling tool that we have.
Beyond that- I prefer to invest local. I'd rather invest in a small shop that will help its immediate than participate in the legalized gambling which is the stock market (which is all the stock market is- outside of IPOs no value is ever created via the stock market).
I do too. My family buys only from Walmart since they are the only local company that has been in town for 20+ years. I always laugh seeing how other communities don't like Walmart or want to keep them out. If you have businesses that die because they can't compete, then they should die a quick death. I'm biased though I'm from Arkansas where the Walmart Supercenter defines the community. Drive through Arkansas some time and not just on I30 and you'd literally see what I mean. Without Walmart all that was there was a farms and mom and pop gas station. With Walmart, we have a shoe store, a food store, a gas station, a place to buy home goods, a place to buy vacuum cleaners, a sporting/hunting goods store, a freaking electronics and book/mag. store. Walmart isn't uniform either. My mom and wife routinely shop at 3-4 different Walmarts for the different stock each has. A properly run Walmart is localized to its community's buying/social standards. My wife owned a percentage of 1 share of Wal-mart from when she worked as a cashier there briefly. We laugh about it since we don't really make any money off it and I think Walmart might have cashed her out when she changed jobs. She didn't have much invested with the company. I know people that have been with Walmart for decades and Walmart is the company stock that they've always bought. They have a really healthy nest egg.
Local business can be or become a gaint multinational global company. This is a good thing and should be encouraged more.
So... tell me, Slashdot, on this fine, dark, cold Tuesday morning: If this technology, or something similar, had been available, what do you wish your ancestors would have left behind for you to read, or watch videos of, or hear? And why?
I'm adopted and would like a generic family history info. and some genetic medical history information. I've go through phases of genology, and most of it is just person's first & last name, when they were born, who they married, when they died, how many kids did the have, and who their parents were. That's 90% of what most people have to work with or leave behind. Think about that. Now think about myspace, slashdot, youtube, and even google or yahoo mail accounts that you could leave a username and password in your will. This is just the tip of the information that we are about to collect. Shortly within 10-20 years, I could see an ipod sized device with several TB recording damn near your whole life or atleast the segments you bookmark that you want kept, your entire entertainment history be it books, music, movies or even games could be stored and logged on a single device. Think of this as the collected info that your grand kids might leave behind. 3-4 generations of that, and they'll start to think that of this era as having almost no personal information left behind.
There's one gotcha there - if you have a debit balance at the end of the year, you have to pay it. But if you have a credit balance, that gets lost. Ideally you want to generate just enough electricity so that your adjusted balance is zero, but that's pretty hard to judge. In any case, you want ample extra capacity just after installation as the panels reduce their efficiency by about 0.5% to 1.0% per year.
You need to talk with your local power folks. They should just let you rollover your balance month to month or "average" it out. You shouldn't "lose" a credit balance though.
The history of Microsoft is the history of vendor lock-in and market control through technology.;)
Laughs, giggles, snorts. Damn near every successful commerical software company ever follows this maxim. MS is just better at it. Open Source is the only software that is different in this repect. Um, I'd agrue that it's human nature to attempt to control other huamns as much as you can. Every thing from priests, prophets, kings, dictators , governments and mothers against drunk driving is about trying to control others behavior. Why should software companies be different? Every manufacturer has tried to lock down their products to be used only as licensed. This isn't an MS specific thing here. It's a human nature at work. Even the GPL is about forcing your will on others.
The western US has enormous geothermal potential, but people will have to get used to the idea that there will be vast sections of high desert they never visit that will covered in pipe networks for heat transport. Perhaps they would like a coal plant built next door instead.
I've come to the conclusion that most humans are stupid. When we get together in a democracy, our collective stupidty increases. The only time big project progress is made is when we have a long term leader guiding the project be it small or huge and that leader can roughshod over everyone as needs be instead of bending to everyone else's desires. I'm slightly environmentally minded, but I hate "environmentists" with a passion. Why? They've lobbied against nuclear power and turned the public off of anything nuclear as "dangerous", they've locally lobbied against wind farms that were off shore and barely visible and not able to be heard, they say that they like solar, but solar is the total enemy to the real environmentalist because our current method is building large plants that would consume large amounts of land to generate power. Solar would never make it by them. The only idealized power solution that they want is roof top power. Heck, I share in that dream as well, but I don't actively block other energy methods from being developed or used. I consider myself a conservative environmentalist, which by my own definition means humanity is at the top and should attempt to force/form the Earth and its wild life into our well rather than the reverse and that environmental measures do not require a change in my lifestyle. If my local power company ever offers a deal where they put up and pay for roof top power at my home, and I just keep on paying them a power bill; I'd go with that, but I will not lower my standard of living for any environmentalist or environmental movement. I can't afford that 100K total home solution that was on slashdot a few days ago, but if the power company/government owned it and I just keep on paying a monthly bill to recoup their investment I'd be o.k. with that. That is the direction "environmentalist" need to go instead of assuming we all can obtain 100K-500K to develop our own solution and then that to pay itself back over 30 years. Um, for a system to pay itself back, I'd have to never move. I can't predict the future, but what if I got a new job in 5, 10, 20 years and decided to move then? I'd be out a big chuck of money. That's why I'd rather the government or power company own and monitor the equipment. They'd regulate or sell power to whoever lives at the dwelling.
The question is- should we, as society, allow such organizations to exist? Is it a wise move to allow such massive accumulation of wealth and power in what basicly amounts to a sociopathic organization?
It's obvious from that statement that you don't have much stock invested in any company.
Please stay away from my kids. I don't want them growing up with paranoia about shaking hands or touching doorknobs.
Hey, I hate actually sending my kids to school. I have nothing against public school, but most of the common colds that travel home do so through our kids going to school. Sanitization (washing hands after going to the bathroom and avoiding generally touching other people unless needed or getting breathed on)needs to be stressed more than it is. I have nothing against shaking hands, but it is the one acceptable form of touch other than maybe hugs and both involve body contact. I didn't think about doorknobs, but yes they spread disease as well. I wouldn't worry about my doorknobs, but I work in a building open to the public. I have no idea how many sick people may have been in or out of the building. Heck, I can smell some people not bathing. Trust me its not that much of paranoia when I can smell others.
I'm not saying don't wash your hands after using the toilet and don't take precautions with food, I'm just worried we're going too far. If we don't use our immune systems they'll become weak, and we'll be wiped out by some bug in the next century or so.
Come on people, we surivived for years without all this over-sanitisation, I'm sure we can survive a few colds and a bit of stomach flu!
Well, I'd rather live in a world without the common oold or season sneezing and coughing. I'm not worried about any bug wiping out humanity. That's an overstated risk. Diseases just breed and its not to their evolutionary benefit to kill their hosts. We might have something breakout and spread through the developed world withing a month and everyone know is hacking, sneezing, coughing, or running to the bathroom. Any of the really nasties that basically disables a person or gives the hives, rashes, 100+ fever, or really annoying side effects would be slower spreading and if we had an outbreak of something like that we'd really start over sanitizing. Let's be honest. Sanitization has saved more lives and prevented more plagues than our vaulted medical community has. Sanitization is the only real method that we have to prevent and control the outbreak of disease. All it would take to eliminate the hand shake as a social welcoming custom or casual hugs with non family member would be one really heavy outbreak. Elimination of those two things would reduce disease transmission. Really, we need a list of 10 things everyone could do on a daily basis to reduce their infection potential and start teaching it in public schools.
Genetically, we could survive in really nasty enivornments. We could exist with heavy diseased percentages of the population, but why if we don't have to?
Call me old-fashioned, but before a gov't starts acting on all of their world-stage aspirations, shouldn't they feed their citizens?
Nope that'll rarely happen. Almost all governments act for their long term good rather than the good of their poorest citizens. The US, USSR, and China all have our "starving poor," but that hasn't stopped anyone of those countries from atleast attempting go into space. You could argue that the USSR's economic model reduced their capital so they just couldn't afford their space program, but for a long time they were neck and neck with the US space program. The US's higher standard of living allows our tax rate to fund more. China has a huge population so even though they may not spend the dollar amount that the US does; China can educate engineers and keep them working over time on a space program for long term national profit. India may think about doing the same thing. Just tell those starving poor to go through their engineering program and you'll get feed once you have been through their educational boot camp. Problem is its still possible to have starving engineers.
FTA: "While the cost may deter all but wealthy environmentalists from converting their homes, Strizki and his associates stress the project is designed to be replicated and that the price tag on the prototype is a lot higher than imitators would pay. Now that first-time costs of research and design have been met, the price would be about $100,000, Strizki said."
FTA: Caminiti argues that the cost of the hydrogen/solar setup works out at about $4,000 a year when its $100,000 cost is spread over the anticipated 25-year lifespan of the equipment. That's still a lot higher than the $1,500 a year the average U.S. homeowner spends on energy, according to the federal government. Even if gasoline costs averaging about $1,000 per car annually are included in the energy mix, the renewables option is still more expensive than the grid/gasoline combination.
So at spending $100K rather than $500K, you still end up paying through the nose through for the renewable option. Get a system that costs only 10K or the government or utility company paying for its intial install while you pay back the gov. or utility over 25-30 and it might work. For $100K, only rich and upper class folks can afford it. I have a 25 year 70K mortage. I couldn't afford a $170K mortage. They need to redo this and try budgeting about the price of a new or used car rather than an new or used home for the purchase price.
"But it's on the Internet" does not change the fact that politically active bloggers with $100,000 salaries or budgets are lobbyists and should be treated like the normal K Street type.
Here is a question. What if I setup an internet lobbying/blogging company in Russia, Japan, Britian, or Canada, but mainly aimmed my blogging/lobbying efforts to the US public. I have no idea what kinda of lobbying laws exist in the countries mentioned, but say that I follow local laws where my site is hosted and my company is based. Is there anything that US anti-paid lobbying laws could prevent my company from doing business? Oh, a guess they could jail me or share holders in the country when we visit the US. Has anyone thought of that concept to make a global lobbying blog aimmed not just at the US government, but at all various governments? It's an interesting concept.
Perhaps tattoos on the forehead and cheeks (both ends) would be appropriate a big L in red to denote a lying lobbyist whose opinions are for sale to the highest bidder.
Everyone inside the sovereign borders of a country should expect to be subject to its laws whether they agree with them or not. So the US soldiers who raped that Iraqi woman should be subject to Iraqi law and not US military law?
Now you missed the point where he said sovereign. While we have military might over there the US is the sovereign power so our rules apply. Wait 10-20 years and if are gone and anything like that happens they'd be charded under Iraq law, but while some one else's military is in their country and attempting to social engineer their country. Nope, they aren't sovereign at the moment. Sovereign is about power over others not any natural.
The only wrinkle in this case is that it is my understanding they committed the offense while not in the US. The only wrinkle?! That's the difference between not committing a crime and committing one!
It really depends. Say we have a religious state that makes it illegal to be a member of any religion other than their state religion. Let's make the state religion the flying spaghetti monster religion. Since most of us aren't members of that religion, we could all be treated as criminals if we entered that fictional country. The 3 topics that pop into mind are legal gambling, legal sex workers, and legal recreational drugs could all be properly licensed and ok in my fictional country. Well, the US has a war on Drugs and doesn't like those that sell sex for money, and is odd about gambling so would anyone of the citizens of my ficitional country be arested and treated as a criminal if they visited the US? What if we tried to do something stupid and put into law that its illegal to compete with a US business? Would those working at a Honda plant in the US be jailed for not working for a US company?
For things like murder and assault, I'd want those to be universally arrestable for, but for other things I'd have very mixed reactions. What if the US made it illegal to do any global warming science and started jailing climate sciencists? I'm picking some silly examples because that shows the logic better. What we over here don't like and might consider illegal or immoral some other country might fight legal and moral.
If public money funds research, it is unthinkable that the public should be forbidden to review the product of their contributions. We have a right to know what is going on, and in the case of research, there is little, if any, defense provided in saying that information is simply too dangerous for normal people to know.
I read this and just giggled. Of course, we don't have a right to alot of the R&D that government does on our behave. That just pressed slashdot buttons right there. I'll tell you 3 things that you don't need to know: 1 what the CIA, NSA, FBI or DOD builds, 2 nuclear weapons, biowarfare agents, cheap chemical weapons or homemade explosives, urban guerilla warfare tactics, 3 the cover my ass and our friends ass clause that we don't want you to learn about something until we aren't just retired, but buried so we don't have to have reporters pestering us through our retirements for morally questionable things we did with public funds. I think that we need a www.foia.gov that is responsible for all the nations "public to its citizens" data. (I'd require my citizens to register and log in to make sure only my citizens were reading all that info though.) I'd hope civilian usage products would be held for the public trust and any US company could use the info. There are plenty of things that we just don't need to know that was funded by our tax dollars. I'd love to have the plans for stealth bombers to look at, but I would hope that they'll never release that info through a FIOA request.
But I don't want to take the risk. The thought of coming over all smug in 20 years because I was right and climate change *is* caused by us, will be little comfort if my house is under water at that point.
It might be academically a bit awkward, but we have actually run out of time for further debate on this one. Some may say we ran out of time 20 years ago. This may make debating societies angry, but I suspect we are going to have to just deal with that.
I think that insurance companies need to start now and have global warming declared an act of god so that they don't have to pay out any global warming related flooding. They can then refuse to insure any home that is currently in the predicted global warming flood plain or raise rates to what every it will take for them to rebuild all those lost homes/businesses or whatever. They could do that now in the attempt that you move to some place that won't be flooded in 20 years. The bad part is that they've not been very accurate with there climate models. I kinda trust quanitity of water measurements, but we really won't know what gets flooded until it happens. We could start new building codes that all new construction in those zones be certified to be livable in 20 meters of water. That might work as well.
As we've seen time and time again though, advancements in culture and technology occur when people are brave enough to break away from the collective and tread down new paths even at the risk of being ridiculed or persecuted.
The reasonable change their ways to conform to the will of the world. The unreasonable change the world to conform to their will. Therefore all change and progress is the result of the unresasonable.
This proposal isn't really all that radical either - it would simply formalise the situation. Any scientist that makes public his reservations with the global warming dogma is already dealing severe damage to his career.
How many topics or fields do we have that could be like this. Off the top of my head there is global warming, stem cell research, any research into human cloning, evolution/creationism/intelligent design, we have dicussions on bad things that could happen with nano tech that might mean laws to limit it or drive the more useful parts under ground and out of oversight, genetic enginnering, and human drug experimention. The main stream scientic community thinks one thing and those that go a different route have always been blasted. I'm not really thrilled with listing the whole evolution thing, but its the next science topic that comes to mind after and sometime before global warming. Real scientists most likely all side along one side, but tradional religious views have forced the other sides. I'm strongly against this mainly because I'm still just plan undecided.
I watched Al Gore's little movie expecting to see things that would make change my mind. His images just didn't come across to me. I felt sorry for the guy for losing, but also got pissed because half the movie was about him rather than global warming info. I was told from slashdot that it was crammed fill with charts and graphs. I'd need to go back and count, but like 5-10 charts isn't crammed full to me. It seemed like that he just focused on pictures of ice melting. Um, I need more. The ocean current bit was worrying and the potential flooding areas was slightly alarming. I just wasn't convinced. I'm undecided mainly because I don't trust the political bent of all those that suddenly have come out infavor of global warming. I actually went into the movie wanting to be informed. I felt like I was being prepared for his next run for President with global warming as his single issue with "massive industrial/economic changes."
Here in China, the product's quality is more important. People will generally say they don't like Japanese people (although they'll also say Japanese people are very hard-working, very polite, the women are very kind, etc.), but regardless of lingering racial resentment, Japanese goods are extremely commonplace and everyday. That's particularly true with small electronics like digital cameras or stereos.
Over in the US its price and performance. Sony, Nintendo, and Samsung are just as US to me as MS, IBM, Ford, and Walmart. I don't know maybe I just trust multinational companies that have always been here to me more than national companies.
I never understood why it was called a law. It was an incredibly accurate prediction, but there was nothing holding is there. I would think that any dramatic increase in technoloby would lead to a jump larger than Moore's law.
Shh, it's just a trend. It could have been wrong or we could have hit a physical limit. One day we will. I like to think of Moore's law as more a goal post of the eletronics industry. They have to double every 12-18 months because of Moore's law. Could this mindset actually work in other fields? What if we have a Ford's law that car mpg double every 1-5 years? There isn't any thing mystical or magical about the IT industry or Moore's law. (Moore's law is more that some one pointed out the trend that we were achieving and we've kept it up. That we've kept it up is the surprise.)
Stand on any street corner in a place like Shanghai and you'll see plenty of people getting by on a few dollars a day, but you'll also see plenty of Benzes drive past.
You know. I always hear about how the Japanese generally dislike buying US over a Japenese product. I wonder if the average Chinese would rather buy US than a Japanese product. Japan invaded them in WWII there should be some lingering public dislike of Japan that US companies should be able to make a buck off of. I find highschoolers here in the US with a new found dislike of Japan after they learn about WWII and Pearl Harbor. But then again they don't think of Sony or Nintendo as foreign companies. They've always been here to them so what makes them foreign that their hq is in another country? Kids these days think alittle more globally than the adults do.
Slashdot Mirror
Ha, and here I was thinking that the best way to protect your children online was having an honest and open relationship and giving them decent social/online education: What a fool I am.
(88NoSoup4U88 this ain't aimmed at you. It's aimed at the generic you that would rush out and buy this product.)
The best way to protect your kids without you having to do it is... not to have any. If you can't accept that, you need to be sterilized because there is no other solution to parenting than doing it yourself or with your family (S.O. or parents, which means your S.O.'s parents.) If you don't parent or don't want to parent, then you should quickly and quietly remove yourself from the gene pool. Trust me; we are genetically programed to reproduce enough humans will breed even if you don't. Using something like this, would just allow you to shift the blame when your lack of parenting messes up and the AI doesn't do what you expect or want and allows your child to learn or absorb content that you wouldn't like.
I could see an ipod sized device with several TB recording damn near your whole life
I could see doing that for your kids - after all, when you're old and cranky, you will want to get back at them somehow for putting you in that dingy nursing home.
But what do you have against your future generations? Why do you hate them so much?
Of course, this is slashdot, so it's an entirely theoretical discussion, but still....
Are you implying that I hate future generations because I can envision a device that could potentially record an entire human life span of audio/video/GPS/web content/entertainment data? I'll admit that I couldn't careless about "reviewing" the bulk of my life. Heck, I slept through 5-8 hours daily talk about how you could compress that down! Of course, it could be a boon to doctors/scientists studying sleep disorders and building better beds and pillows to have the sleep data of millions. I won't even go into detail how such a device could be used to record the entire familial sexual history back several generations and as people mature. Heck, "child" porn laws would have to be thrown out the window if any most "kids" record their "entire" sexual history from pre18 until old age. I'm not ready for that. The future is too scary for me. I'm only comfortable of seeing attractive strangers in their early 20s have sex. I don't think that I could handle a future where I could have access to my parents, my grand parent's, and my great grand parent's "entire" sexual history with ommentary and highlights. Sorry, you were right. I do hate the future generations.
Let your kids get a few colds, they'll be fine. And yes, maybe you'll catch a cold or the flu from someone coming through your building. You'll be fine too. I could not take a shower for a week, come down with a cold, cough all over my hands, shake your hand and give you a hug. Trust me, it won't kill you.
Genetically we are the same and my system and my kid's sytem could handle it fine. Do I want you or your kind anywhere near my family if I can help it? Not on your life. I hate smokers and those that emit oders as forcefully invading my personal air space. Those that smoke, emit oders including perfume, from too much drink body from lack of regular bathing/showering, and those that knowingly purposely spread disease should all have the same social stigma as worse than sex offenders that aim for little kids. I don't mind you doing your thing, but you better not let my senses be aware that you and your friends are doing your thing and that includes smell. The human nose is the most underused air sampling tool that we have.
Beyond that- I prefer to invest local. I'd rather invest in a small shop that will help its immediate than participate in the legalized gambling which is the stock market (which is all the stock market is- outside of IPOs no value is ever created via the stock market).
I do too. My family buys only from Walmart since they are the only local company that has been in town for 20+ years. I always laugh seeing how other communities don't like Walmart or want to keep them out. If you have businesses that die because they can't compete, then they should die a quick death. I'm biased though I'm from Arkansas where the Walmart Supercenter defines the community. Drive through Arkansas some time and not just on I30 and you'd literally see what I mean. Without Walmart all that was there was a farms and mom and pop gas station. With Walmart, we have a shoe store, a food store, a gas station, a place to buy home goods, a place to buy vacuum cleaners, a sporting/hunting goods store, a freaking electronics and book/mag. store. Walmart isn't uniform either. My mom and wife routinely shop at 3-4 different Walmarts for the different stock each has. A properly run Walmart is localized to its community's buying/social standards. My wife owned a percentage of 1 share of Wal-mart from when she worked as a cashier there briefly. We laugh about it since we don't really make any money off it and I think Walmart might have cashed her out when she changed jobs. She didn't have much invested with the company. I know people that have been with Walmart for decades and Walmart is the company stock that they've always bought. They have a really healthy nest egg.
Local business can be or become a gaint multinational global company. This is a good thing and should be encouraged more.
So... tell me, Slashdot, on this fine, dark, cold Tuesday morning: If this technology, or something similar, had been available, what do you wish your ancestors would have left behind for you to read, or watch videos of, or hear? And why?
I'm adopted and would like a generic family history info. and some genetic medical history information. I've go through phases of genology, and most of it is just person's first & last name, when they were born, who they married, when they died, how many kids did the have, and who their parents were. That's 90% of what most people have to work with or leave behind. Think about that. Now think about myspace, slashdot, youtube, and even google or yahoo mail accounts that you could leave a username and password in your will. This is just the tip of the information that we are about to collect. Shortly within 10-20 years, I could see an ipod sized device with several TB recording damn near your whole life or atleast the segments you bookmark that you want kept, your entire entertainment history be it books, music, movies or even games could be stored and logged on a single device. Think of this as the collected info that your grand kids might leave behind. 3-4 generations of that, and they'll start to think that of this era as having almost no personal information left behind.
There's one gotcha there - if you have a debit balance at the end of the year, you have to pay it. But if you have a credit balance, that gets lost. Ideally you want to generate just enough electricity so that your adjusted balance is zero, but that's pretty hard to judge. In any case, you want ample extra capacity just after installation as the panels reduce their efficiency by about 0.5% to 1.0% per year.
You need to talk with your local power folks. They should just let you rollover your balance month to month or "average" it out. You shouldn't "lose" a credit balance though.
The history of Microsoft is the history of vendor lock-in and market control through technology.;)
Laughs, giggles, snorts. Damn near every successful commerical software company ever follows this maxim. MS is just better at it. Open Source is the only software that is different in this repect. Um, I'd agrue that it's human nature to attempt to control other huamns as much as you can. Every thing from priests, prophets, kings, dictators , governments and mothers against drunk driving is about trying to control others behavior. Why should software companies be different? Every manufacturer has tried to lock down their products to be used only as licensed. This isn't an MS specific thing here. It's a human nature at work. Even the GPL is about forcing your will on others.
The western US has enormous geothermal potential, but people will have to get used to the idea that there will be vast sections of high desert they never visit that will covered in pipe networks for heat transport. Perhaps they would like a coal plant built next door instead.
I've come to the conclusion that most humans are stupid. When we get together in a democracy, our collective stupidty increases. The only time big project progress is made is when we have a long term leader guiding the project be it small or huge and that leader can roughshod over everyone as needs be instead of bending to everyone else's desires. I'm slightly environmentally minded, but I hate "environmentists" with a passion. Why? They've lobbied against nuclear power and turned the public off of anything nuclear as "dangerous", they've locally lobbied against wind farms that were off shore and barely visible and not able to be heard, they say that they like solar, but solar is the total enemy to the real environmentalist because our current method is building large plants that would consume large amounts of land to generate power. Solar would never make it by them. The only idealized power solution that they want is roof top power. Heck, I share in that dream as well, but I don't actively block other energy methods from being developed or used. I consider myself a conservative environmentalist, which by my own definition means humanity is at the top and should attempt to force/form the Earth and its wild life into our well rather than the reverse and that environmental measures do not require a change in my lifestyle. If my local power company ever offers a deal where they put up and pay for roof top power at my home, and I just keep on paying them a power bill; I'd go with that, but I will not lower my standard of living for any environmentalist or environmental movement. I can't afford that 100K total home solution that was on slashdot a few days ago, but if the power company/government owned it and I just keep on paying a monthly bill to recoup their investment I'd be o.k. with that. That is the direction "environmentalist" need to go instead of assuming we all can obtain 100K-500K to develop our own solution and then that to pay itself back over 30 years. Um, for a system to pay itself back, I'd have to never move. I can't predict the future, but what if I got a new job in 5, 10, 20 years and decided to move then? I'd be out a big chuck of money. That's why I'd rather the government or power company own and monitor the equipment. They'd regulate or sell power to whoever lives at the dwelling.
The question is- should we, as society, allow such organizations to exist? Is it a wise move to allow such massive accumulation of wealth and power in what basicly amounts to a sociopathic organization?
It's obvious from that statement that you don't have much stock invested in any company.
Please stay away from my kids. I don't want them growing up with paranoia about shaking hands or touching doorknobs.
Hey, I hate actually sending my kids to school. I have nothing against public school, but most of the common colds that travel home do so through our kids going to school. Sanitization (washing hands after going to the bathroom and avoiding generally touching other people unless needed or getting breathed on)needs to be stressed more than it is. I have nothing against shaking hands, but it is the one acceptable form of touch other than maybe hugs and both involve body contact. I didn't think about doorknobs, but yes they spread disease as well. I wouldn't worry about my doorknobs, but I work in a building open to the public. I have no idea how many sick people may have been in or out of the building. Heck, I can smell some people not bathing. Trust me its not that much of paranoia when I can smell others.
I'm not saying don't wash your hands after using the toilet and don't take precautions with food, I'm just worried we're going too far. If we don't use our immune systems they'll become weak, and we'll be wiped out by some bug in the next century or so.
Come on people, we surivived for years without all this over-sanitisation, I'm sure we can survive a few colds and a bit of stomach flu!
Well, I'd rather live in a world without the common oold or season sneezing and coughing. I'm not worried about any bug wiping out humanity. That's an overstated risk. Diseases just breed and its not to their evolutionary benefit to kill their hosts. We might have something breakout and spread through the developed world withing a month and everyone know is hacking, sneezing, coughing, or running to the bathroom. Any of the really nasties that basically disables a person or gives the hives, rashes, 100+ fever, or really annoying side effects would be slower spreading and if we had an outbreak of something like that we'd really start over sanitizing. Let's be honest. Sanitization has saved more lives and prevented more plagues than our vaulted medical community has. Sanitization is the only real method that we have to prevent and control the outbreak of disease. All it would take to eliminate the hand shake as a social welcoming custom or casual hugs with non family member would be one really heavy outbreak. Elimination of those two things would reduce disease transmission. Really, we need a list of 10 things everyone could do on a daily basis to reduce their infection potential and start teaching it in public schools.
Genetically, we could survive in really nasty enivornments. We could exist with heavy diseased percentages of the population, but why if we don't have to?
Call me old-fashioned, but before a gov't starts acting on all of their world-stage aspirations, shouldn't they feed their citizens?
Nope that'll rarely happen. Almost all governments act for their long term good rather than the good of their poorest citizens. The US, USSR, and China all have our "starving poor," but that hasn't stopped anyone of those countries from atleast attempting go into space. You could argue that the USSR's economic model reduced their capital so they just couldn't afford their space program, but for a long time they were neck and neck with the US space program. The US's higher standard of living allows our tax rate to fund more. China has a huge population so even though they may not spend the dollar amount that the US does; China can educate engineers and keep them working over time on a space program for long term national profit. India may think about doing the same thing. Just tell those starving poor to go through their engineering program and you'll get feed once you have been through their educational boot camp. Problem is its still possible to have starving engineers.
FTA: "While the cost may deter all but wealthy environmentalists from converting their homes, Strizki and his associates stress the project is designed to be replicated and that the price tag on the prototype is a lot higher than imitators would pay. Now that first-time costs of research and design have been met, the price would be about $100,000, Strizki said."
FTA: Caminiti argues that the cost of the hydrogen/solar setup works out at about $4,000 a year when its $100,000 cost is spread over the anticipated 25-year lifespan of the equipment. That's still a lot higher than the $1,500 a year the average U.S. homeowner spends on energy, according to the federal government. Even if gasoline costs averaging about $1,000 per car annually are included in the energy mix, the renewables option is still more expensive than the grid/gasoline combination.
So at spending $100K rather than $500K, you still end up paying through the nose through for the renewable option. Get a system that costs only 10K or the government or utility company paying for its intial install while you pay back the gov. or utility over 25-30 and it might work. For $100K, only rich and upper class folks can afford it. I have a 25 year 70K mortage. I couldn't afford a $170K mortage. They need to redo this and try budgeting about the price of a new or used car rather than an new or used home for the purchase price.
"But it's on the Internet" does not change the fact that politically active bloggers with $100,000 salaries or budgets are lobbyists and should be treated like the normal K Street type.
Here is a question. What if I setup an internet lobbying/blogging company in Russia, Japan, Britian, or Canada, but mainly aimmed my blogging/lobbying efforts to the US public. I have no idea what kinda of lobbying laws exist in the countries mentioned, but say that I follow local laws where my site is hosted and my company is based. Is there anything that US anti-paid lobbying laws could prevent my company from doing business? Oh, a guess they could jail me or share holders in the country when we visit the US. Has anyone thought of that concept to make a global lobbying blog aimmed not just at the US government, but at all various governments? It's an interesting concept.
Perhaps tattoos on the forehead and cheeks (both ends) would be appropriate a big L in red to denote a lying lobbyist whose opinions are for sale to the highest bidder.
But then what would we label the lawyers with?
What you are suggesting is very dangerous. If I put up a web page, it should sufficethat I comply with all local laws.
I'd modify that to apply to the local laws of the country hosting your webpage not your local laws.
Everyone inside the sovereign borders of a country should expect to be subject to its laws whether they agree with them or not.
So the US soldiers who raped that Iraqi woman should be subject to Iraqi law and not US military law?
Now you missed the point where he said sovereign. While we have military might over there the US is the sovereign power so our rules apply. Wait 10-20 years and if are gone and anything like that happens they'd be charded under Iraq law, but while some one else's military is in their country and attempting to social engineer their country. Nope, they aren't sovereign at the moment. Sovereign is about power over others not any natural.
The only wrinkle in this case is that it is my understanding they committed the offense while not in the US.
The only wrinkle?! That's the difference between not committing a crime and committing one!
It really depends. Say we have a religious state that makes it illegal to be a member of any religion other than their state religion. Let's make the state religion the flying spaghetti monster religion. Since most of us aren't members of that religion, we could all be treated as criminals if we entered that fictional country. The 3 topics that pop into mind are legal gambling, legal sex workers, and legal recreational drugs could all be properly licensed and ok in my fictional country. Well, the US has a war on Drugs and doesn't like those that sell sex for money, and is odd about gambling so would anyone of the citizens of my ficitional country be arested and treated as a criminal if they visited the US? What if we tried to do something stupid and put into law that its illegal to compete with a US business? Would those working at a Honda plant in the US be jailed for not working for a US company?
For things like murder and assault, I'd want those to be universally arrestable for, but for other things I'd have very mixed reactions. What if the US made it illegal to do any global warming science and started jailing climate sciencists? I'm picking some silly examples because that shows the logic better. What we over here don't like and might consider illegal or immoral some other country might fight legal and moral.
If public money funds research, it is unthinkable that the public should be forbidden to review the product of their contributions. We have a right to know what is going on, and in the case of research, there is little, if any, defense provided in saying that information is simply too dangerous for normal people to know.
I read this and just giggled. Of course, we don't have a right to alot of the R&D that government does on our behave. That just pressed slashdot buttons right there. I'll tell you 3 things that you don't need to know: 1 what the CIA, NSA, FBI or DOD builds, 2 nuclear weapons, biowarfare agents, cheap chemical weapons or homemade explosives, urban guerilla warfare tactics, 3 the cover my ass and our friends ass clause that we don't want you to learn about something until we aren't just retired, but buried so we don't have to have reporters pestering us through our retirements for morally questionable things we did with public funds. I think that we need a www.foia.gov that is responsible for all the nations "public to its citizens" data. (I'd require my citizens to register and log in to make sure only my citizens were reading all that info though.) I'd hope civilian usage products would be held for the public trust and any US company could use the info. There are plenty of things that we just don't need to know that was funded by our tax dollars. I'd love to have the plans for stealth bombers to look at, but I would hope that they'll never release that info through a FIOA request.
But I don't want to take the risk. The thought of coming over all smug in 20 years because I was right and climate change *is* caused by us, will be little comfort if my house is under water at that point.
It might be academically a bit awkward, but we have actually run out of time for further debate on this one. Some may say we ran out of time 20 years ago. This may make debating societies angry, but I suspect we are going to have to just deal with that.
I think that insurance companies need to start now and have global warming declared an act of god so that they don't have to pay out any global warming related flooding. They can then refuse to insure any home that is currently in the predicted global warming flood plain or raise rates to what every it will take for them to rebuild all those lost homes/businesses or whatever. They could do that now in the attempt that you move to some place that won't be flooded in 20 years. The bad part is that they've not been very accurate with there climate models. I kinda trust quanitity of water measurements, but we really won't know what gets flooded until it happens. We could start new building codes that all new construction in those zones be certified to be livable in 20 meters of water. That might work as well.
As we've seen time and time again though, advancements in culture and technology occur when people are brave enough to break away from the collective and tread down new paths even at the risk of being ridiculed or persecuted.
The reasonable change their ways to conform to the will of the world. The unreasonable change the world to conform to their will. Therefore all change and progress is the result of the unresasonable.
This proposal isn't really all that radical either - it would simply formalise the situation. Any scientist that makes public his reservations with the global warming dogma is already dealing severe damage to his career.
How many topics or fields do we have that could be like this. Off the top of my head there is global warming, stem cell research, any research into human cloning, evolution/creationism/intelligent design, we have dicussions on bad things that could happen with nano tech that might mean laws to limit it or drive the more useful parts under ground and out of oversight, genetic enginnering, and human drug experimention. The main stream scientic community thinks one thing and those that go a different route have always been blasted. I'm not really thrilled with listing the whole evolution thing, but its the next science topic that comes to mind after and sometime before global warming. Real scientists most likely all side along one side, but tradional religious views have forced the other sides. I'm strongly against this mainly because I'm still just plan undecided.
I watched Al Gore's little movie expecting to see things that would make change my mind. His images just didn't come across to me. I felt sorry for the guy for losing, but also got pissed because half the movie was about him rather than global warming info. I was told from slashdot that it was crammed fill with charts and graphs. I'd need to go back and count, but like 5-10 charts isn't crammed full to me. It seemed like that he just focused on pictures of ice melting. Um, I need more. The ocean current bit was worrying and the potential flooding areas was slightly alarming. I just wasn't convinced. I'm undecided mainly because I don't trust the political bent of all those that suddenly have come out infavor of global warming. I actually went into the movie wanting to be informed. I felt like I was being prepared for his next run for President with global warming as his single issue with "massive industrial/economic changes."
Here in China, the product's quality is more important. People will generally say they don't like Japanese people (although they'll also say Japanese people are very hard-working, very polite, the women are very kind, etc.), but regardless of lingering racial resentment, Japanese goods are extremely commonplace and everyday. That's particularly true with small electronics like digital cameras or stereos.
Over in the US its price and performance. Sony, Nintendo, and Samsung are just as US to me as MS, IBM, Ford, and Walmart. I don't know maybe I just trust multinational companies that have always been here to me more than national companies.
I never understood why it was called a law. It was an incredibly accurate prediction, but there was nothing holding is there. I would think that any dramatic increase in technoloby would lead to a jump larger than Moore's law.
Shh, it's just a trend. It could have been wrong or we could have hit a physical limit. One day we will. I like to think of Moore's law as more a goal post of the eletronics industry. They have to double every 12-18 months because of Moore's law. Could this mindset actually work in other fields? What if we have a Ford's law that car mpg double every 1-5 years? There isn't any thing mystical or magical about the IT industry or Moore's law. (Moore's law is more that some one pointed out the trend that we were achieving and we've kept it up. That we've kept it up is the surprise.)
Stand on any street corner in a place like Shanghai and you'll see plenty of people getting by on a few dollars a day, but you'll also see plenty of Benzes drive past.
You know. I always hear about how the Japanese generally dislike buying US over a Japenese product. I wonder if the average Chinese would rather buy US than a Japanese product. Japan invaded them in WWII there should be some lingering public dislike of Japan that US companies should be able to make a buck off of. I find highschoolers here in the US with a new found dislike of Japan after they learn about WWII and Pearl Harbor. But then again they don't think of Sony or Nintendo as foreign companies. They've always been here to them so what makes them foreign that their hq is in another country? Kids these days think alittle more globally than the adults do.